AT&T shakes up management after the failed T-Mobile bid, shifts focus to its wireless operations

Despite numerous "best ever" phrasings in its last quarterly report, AT&T was still quite in the red for Q4, largely because of one-time pension charges, and the breakup fee it had to pay T-Mobile when the proposed merger met headwinds from the administration.

Now the carrier is apparently not only playing the blame game internally, but actually reshuffled its management position, creating new departments in the process. The failure of a bid with such magnitude like the T-Mobile deal was bound to bring changes in strategy, and AT&T issued a press release who will be taking over what now.

John Stankey (pictured), who has been a head of most every business unit in his long career with the carrier, will be promoted to a newly-minted title of "Group President & Chief Strategy Officer." Forrest Miller, who was AT&T's lead for corporate strategy, mergers and acquisitions, will be retiring, probably because no merger and acquisition actually took place.

Ralph de la Vega is taking over the wireless division, where most of the growth will come from in the next years. He and John Donovan, who was made SVP of Technology and Network Operations, will be jointly supervising the LTE rollout, on the quest to catch up with Verizon's flourishing LTE network.

source: AT&T